The man with the regrettable mustache lay quietly though wide awake in his bed. He stared at the ceiling, which had been meticulously painted to resemble the Cosmati Pavement mosaic in Westminster Abbey.
He had worked on the painting for almost two full years, and every morning upon awakening he had lain in his bed and reread the Latin inscription that had been inlaid in brass lettering along three sides of the mosaic when it was constructed in the 13th century.
The brass letters that made up the inscription were no longer extant to the mosaic as most of the brass had deteriorated due to wear & tear - foot traffic being the main culprit. However, the inscription had been dutifully recorded in the 15th century by a chronicler named John Flete
In the year of Christ one thousand two hundred and twelve plus sixty minus four, the third King Henry, the city, Odoricus and the Abbot put these porphyry stones together.
If the reader wisely considers all that is laid down, he will find here the end of the primum mobile; a hedge (lives for) three years, add dogs and horses and men, stags and ravens, eagles, enormous whales, the world: each one following triples the years of the one before
The spherical globe here shows the archetypal macrocosm
The painting was formidable, especially when one considers he used a postcard featuring the mosaic as his only guide.
The postcard had been sent to him by the Countess Beatrix from her home in London. He had never seen the mosaic in person, as that would require leaving the home he had built specifically so he would never have to venture out into the world ever again.
The house had been designed so that his bedroom was the axis of the floor plan. The four corners of the innermost square of the mosaic were aligned with the four primary directions, just as they had been in Westminster Abbey.
This allowed the man to feel as if he was waking in the center of the world every morning, even though his bedroom itself, inspired by Kubrick's 2001 ASO bedroom at the end of the film (without the Rococo paintings though, as he despised Rococo paintings) was rectangular.
The mosaic being square and the room being rectangular was deliberate, as that was how the man was able to forgo placing the Latin inscriptions as they were originally placed in the mosaic, inset as three lines of script along the borders, and instead into a single paragraph painted directly above the head of his bed.
The man had reproduced the Latin inscription verbatim in large letters in the 24' 10" X 5' 2" rectangle that completed the 24' 10" X 30' 0" rectangle that was the ceiling of the bedroom.
The inscription listed the then King of England as well as the head of the craftsmen who made the mosaic, the date of its creation, and, in a simple riddle, the lifespan of the world.
19,683 years was the answer to the riddle. From the date of the worlds creation until the last time the sun would rise on any terran horizon would be 19,683 years.
Which, the man calculated, meant there were 14,657 years left for mankind to get differences sorted and come to terms with the fragility of existence.
